


The Sum of Which (Will Never Make a Whole)

by With_the_Wolves



Series: Stranger Danger Angst [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Mentioned Not-Them Sasha James, Mentioned Sasha James, Photographs, polaroids
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29438304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/With_the_Wolves/pseuds/With_the_Wolves
Summary: Sasha dies, and every one of Tim's photos and memories are populated with the face of her killer.Jon finds a polaroid.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Series: Stranger Danger Angst [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2162307
Comments: 3
Kudos: 37





	The Sum of Which (Will Never Make a Whole)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Violette_Witch](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Violette_Witch/gifts).



> A second fic written for Violette_Witch as part of TMA Valentine's Exchange 2021. This one is even sadder! :D

The wallpaper on Tim’s phone is still a picture of Sasha, from a trip to the beach they took together one weekend. In the photo, Sasha is on Tim’s back, her arms tightly crossed around his shoulders. She’s wearing a big sunhat and grinning.

Except it isn’t her in the photo, is it? It’s the thing that killed her.

Tim opens his phone’s camera roll. It’s full of pictures of her, of her and Tim. They were always together, up until the worm attack. Best friends. Love interests.

He scrolls through, anger and grief running through him in equal measure. Sasha had loved trivia nights, had loved half-planned adventures to new places, had loved binge watching murder mystery movies when she was sick. Tim has so many photos of her, and—she isn’t in any of them. Not anymore.

He finds a photo of himself, asleep in what he recognizes as Sasha’s bedroom. Sasha had clearly taken it, and Tim is struck by the softness of the moment, the quiet vulnerability of falling asleep in someone else’s presence.

The next photo had clearly once been a selfie. Tim is still asleep in the background, but in the corner of the shot is Sasha’s grinning face, very close to the camera. A photo that Sasha would take for the sole purpose of sending to Tim to tease him.

But it isn’t Sasha in the photo now.

Tim feels suddenly furious. All these memories he’d shared with Sasha, soft and vulnerable moments together, and every single one is now populated with the face of the thing that killed her.

Tim deletes the photo. Then he deletes all the others, too, every photo that Sasha has been erased from.

When it’s done, he doesn’t feel any better.

***

Jon was always bad at hiding his emotions, and that doesn’t change when things start to go to hell. If anything, he gets worse at it, dragging himself around the office like an injured puppy.

From the moment he steps out of his office, Jon is already telegraphing his nervousness so clearly it could probably be seen from space. He’s got something clutched in his hands, and Tim wonders for a moment where he’s headed, before Jon starts clearly making his way towards Tim’s desk, looking at the floor the whole way.

It annoys Tim, more than anything else. What right does he have, acting like he expects Tim to hurt him? He’s the one who trapped them all down here. He’s the one that got Sasha—

“What?” he snaps, when Jon reaches his desk and stops, still looking more at the floor than at Tim.

“I—here,” Jon says, and now Tim can see that what he’s got in his hands is a photograph. A polaroid. He hands it to Tim, and Tim stares at it for a long moment. It’s a photo of Jon, younger and unscarred. He’s scowling, and standing next to him is a woman Tim doesn’t recognize. She’s taller than Jon by a good few inches, and her arm is around his shoulders. She’s black, her hair falling around her shoulders in long braids. She’s grinning from behind orange glasses that take up practically half her face.

The photo is labeled, _Sasha and Jon, 2012_.

Tim wills himself to recognize her, to see anything familiar in her face. But there’s nothing. When he thinks of Sasha, the only image that comes to mind is of that—thing.

Tim’s eyes are burning, and he blinks heavily. He looks up, wanting to ask—But Jon is already halfway back across the room, fleeing back to his office.

“Jon!” Tim says, and Jon turns, still nervous, his shoulders hunched.

“I’m sorry I didn’t find it sooner,” Jon starts before Tim can say anything else. “I-I’ve been looking everywhere, but I thought it might have gotten lost when we moved down here, and I didn’t—I didn’t want to get your hopes up, in—in case I couldn’t find it.” He swallows. “That’s her, though.” Jon’s voice is thick, and Tim realizes that this is also Jon’s first time seeing the picture, his first time seeing what Sasha actually looked like.

Jon had also been Sasha’s friend.

“Do you have any other photos?” Tim asks, suddenly desperate, his voice rising with hope.

“I—No, I’m sorry,” Jon says, and the hope sinks until he continues, “That’s the only polaroid I have. It—Everything else just has the, the Not-Them, so—”

“But you do have pictures, right?” Tim says. “You didn’t—delete them?”

Jon stares at Tim for a long moment, blinking. “I—No, I didn’t. I made a locked folder for them, so I wouldn’t—But I couldn’t bring myself to—”

“Show me?” Tim asks, and his voice sounds too much, too desperate.

But Jon just nods, slowly approaching. Tim makes room, and Jon pulls up a chair beside him and opens his phone to the right folder. 

Jon starts scrolling through the pictures quickly, and looking over his shoulder, Tim can see that Sasha isn’t in any of them. For a moment, he’s confused. Didn’t Jon say this folder was specifically for photos of Sasha?

Then Jon says, “Sorry, I—I don’t take a lot of pictures. Sasha liked to send me—most of these she took, so she isn’t in a lot of them.”

“Can I?” he asks, his voice shaky. He reaches for Jon’s phone, and Jon lets him take it. He goes back to the beginning, imagining the woman in the polaroid grinning behind the camera.

The first few pictures are of Jon, much younger-looking, back in research. He has an identical expression in all of them, scowling at the camera. But he’s wearing different clothes in each one, and Tim can’t help but smile, thinking of Sasha harassing Jon, day after day.

There’s a pair of photos that were clearly taken in quick succession. In the first one, Jon is looking at the camera with his usual scowl. In the second, he’s turned back to his work, but he’s got his middle finger raised.

It’s captioned, “does your grandmother know you use that kind of language???” and Tim lets out a surprised laugh before moving on.

There are a few more photos of Jon in research, and then one of Jon and Sasha in a dark bar. Sasha’s head is on Jon’s shoulder, and he’s smiling although he looks a little on-edge. Tim looks at the polaroid, imagines that woman in the picture instead.

He keeps scrolling, until he gets to a photo of himself, standing near the door to the research department, talking to someone just outside. It’s slightly blurry, like it was taken in a hurry, and it’s captioned, “new guy is cute!!!”

Tim laughs at that, raising an eyebrow at Jon.

“I told her to stop texting me during work hours,” Jon says, his cheeks slightly dark.

Tim’s not planning to push it any further, until he swipes to the next picture, which was clearly taken from Jon’s desk. It shows Tim and Sasha talking, Tim now seated at the empty desk beside her, just starting to get settled in. It’s captioned, “Who did you pay off to get him to sit next to you?”

Tim looks at Jon, who is now blushing furiously and steadfastly avoiding eye contact. “Was this before or after you told her to stop texting you?” he asked, his voice teasing.

Jon stumbles a bit, and it’s—nice. Warm. This kind of teasing used to happen so easily between them, and now—Well.

Tim looks back at the photo, trying to picture it. Sitting at his desk in research with the woman in the polaroid. With Sasha. For a moment, it seems to stir some memory in his mind, but it isn’t strong. He probably just imagined it. Wishful thinking.

The next picture is of him, his first day on the job. He’s smiling, and it doesn’t reach his eyes, but it’s something. He remembers this.

Everything still hurt from losing Danny, and he was dead-set on finding his answers in the Magnus Institute’s collection. And then he’d met Sasha, and she was friendly and radiant and, for the first time in months, he’d felt something other than sadness and numb anger. He looks down at the polaroid again, imagines seeing that smile for the first time.

She’d smiled like that when she’d taken the picture, saying, “It’s your first day, we have to remember it fondly forever!”

And it had seemed unfair, to get her hopes up that he was a decent person to be around. He wasn’t, not anymore. So he’d said, “I’m not really here to make friends.” And god, that sounded awful, didn’t it? He wanted to discourage her from pursuing friendship with him, not make her _hate_ him.

But she hadn’t even blinked. “Oh good,” she said. “Because, I swear, the people who work here are the most annoying people I’ve ever met in my life. They are only tolerable as sources of gossip, and if I knew you were trying to make friends with any of them, I’d have to never speak to you again.”

And Tim couldn’t help it; he’d laughed at that. It was mean, but she’d delivered it in such an earnest way, and then she’d winked, and… he’d fallen a little bit in love.

He keeps scrolling. There are lots of photos of Tim. Photos of Tim and Jon, with teasing captions from Sasha that make Tim laugh for their wit. And photos of Tim and Sasha, with captions from Jon that make Tim laugh just for the way that the Jon sitting beside him is so clearly embarrassed.

And there are photos of the three of them together, at work, getting lunch. There’s one of the three of them at some dark bar, Sasha’s arms around both of their shoulders.

And then there’s a photo of Tim, asleep on the break room couch, his head thrown back, mouth hanging open in the most unattractive way possible. It’s captioned, “he looks so peaceful”.

And it isn’t like the photo from Sasha’s bed. It’s more casual, more teasing. But it draws up those same emotions, those same memories. Vulnerable moments now populated with the face of a stranger.

Sasha is gone. The woman who liked to take embarrassing pictures, who held the camera and smiled while Tim snored away beside her, is gone. She only exists anymore in one single polaroid, taken before Tim even knew her.

His eyes start to blur with wetness, and he sets Jon’s phone down, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. His breathing’s gone all sniffly, and he can feel Jon’s awkward shifting beside him.

“… Tim?” Jon says, after a moment. “Are you alright?” As if the answer to that question isn’t fucking obvious. There’s a moment of silence, and then Tim lets out a shuddering breath as Jon’s thin arms wrap around him.

Tim wants to shake it off, to yell at him. They aren’t friends anymore, and that’s Jon’s fault, not his. But… They had been friends. When Sasha was alive, they were friends, and he misses Jon. And he misses Sasha.

So, just for now, he leans into Jon, and cries.

**Author's Note:**

> @suttttton on tumblr!


End file.
